We all know that texts can impact a reader, but how much do readers impact the text? It makes sense that authors are writing for a specific audience, and it is often obvious to the reader when they are not the intended audience for a work. When a reader doesn't understand the signs and symbols in a work it just becomes confusing and tiresome, but often one can create their own meaning within a work although it doesn't necessarily agree with already established ideas.
The best thing I have learned from taking so many lit. classes and reading so much different theory is that you don't necessarily have to be the perfect audience for a text in order to find the art in it.
The problem with interpreting text is the idea that every reader has their own interpretation and often times that interpretation can be proved within the text. Often times there is no concrete answers and if the author never cares to explain it, us as readers are in the dark. I have a personal experience with this, I wrote a paper showing that the narrator of Edgar Allen Poe's short story "A Tell-Tale Heart" is a woman, I could back it up with different points in the text, yet this character cannot be proven concretely as either male or female. It is simple to create a theory with a text and often times it can be proven within that text, although it is up to each individual to agree with this theory.
Another example is Don McLean's song "American Pie" tons of critics have tried to explain what the song means but when McLean was asked, he refused to tell them the meaning because he liked hearing everybody else's interpretations.
Readers will always add their own ideas into a text and like David Bleich believed these interpretations and ideas are challenged by ones own peers and if the idea passes the test then they will be accepted as truth, and if they are not accepted it's back to the drawing board for the reader.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI always write these frgmented sentences because my mind is a lot faster than my typing skills, so I delete and edit... sorry :)
ReplyDeleteI love your title; it sums a lot up while giving a gentle don’t-be-silly slap in the face. I also really like your take on Poe’s “TellTale;” I will have to look at that some day. But you do bring up a very good point, and that is that we can almost find support for bizarre assumption in many things. I’m not saying this about your personal examples; your blog just really got me thinking. I remember, years ago, a bunch of people saying that Pink Floyd’s entire album “The Dark Side of The Moon” was written for and meant to be played with Disney’s cartoon movie “Snow White.” It is said that you play them simultaneously, with the movie volume muted of course. I’ve never tested this, but they say that the music is in sync throughout with too-weird-to-not-be-intentional coincidences; the dwarf’s are even singing the exact words to the song “Money” while they head to the mines to work; this assumption is a sub-culture phenomenon. So, I’m stretching it a bit here to prove a point. Just because something can be proven by using the text… does that really make it true? This kind of textual analysis is why religious wars are fought over the exact same book… but let’s not go there :)
for a long time, my writer of choice was Robert Heinlein, sci-fi super guy. his wife, virginia, should be mentioned too. then, i met the words of umberto eco. just when i needed a new noodle to fork around with...and he never writes the same thing twice. heinlein was good for the days when outerspace was safer than the spaces i was living in. eastside pueblo is nearbliss compared to then. don't have to shower with a loaded weapon in a waterproof bag hanging on the shower head. then along comes eco, on the ground semiotics maestro in bologna, the city. bella mucho, mein hairy monkey me.
ReplyDelete